Designing fertility otherwise: Of human, animal and soil relations
Nadia Campo Woytuk, Joo Young Park, Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard, Madeline Balaam, Marianela Ciolfi Felice · Nordic design research conference · 2023
This exploratory paper unpacks the design space of fertility sensing, reflecting on current meanings and designs for fertility in humans, animals, and soil. Attending to the curious relations between these, we explore how fertility technologies share histories across patriarchal and capitalist visions of bodies and land. We provide a critical feminist analysis of fertility sensing and begin to unpack how design might approach this space otherwise, by means of exploratory prompts and opportunities that we call ‘design seeds’. We accompany the design seeds with four evocative images, engaging practically and materially with these opportunities, opening up for critical yet hopeful engagements with human, animal, and soil fertility. We invite designers to notice these entanglements and extend to more-than-human perspectives in designing fertility tracking and sensing technologies.